


Just As Long As It Feels True

by knutty



Series: Perceptive [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Background Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:32:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knutty/pseuds/knutty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy stands in the doorway, squinting into the dim fug of the crowded bar. She sees him, his seat strategically chosen so that he can view both exits over the length of the bar top and his back is protected. He looks over the rim of his glass out the window past her right shoulder. Darcy turns to see what he’s looking at; was she tailed here by Natasha? She sees nothing, not that she would if the world’s scariest Russian ninja-assassin-spy were following her around. By the time she turns back, one of the seats next to Clint Barton is empty and turned toward her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A collection of drabbles and scenes centered on Darcy Lewis. Because Darcy is us, and she's paying attention. This is my first attempt at anything other than technical writing, so comments and edits are appreciated!

Darcy stands in the doorway, squinting into the dim fug of the crowded bar. She sees him, his seat strategically chosen so that he can view both exits (front door to his 9, and the swinging kitchen door to his 2) over the length of the bar top and his back is protected. He looks over the rim of his glass out the window past her right shoulder. Darcy turns to see what he’s looking at; was she tailed here by Natasha? She sees nothing, not that she would if the world’s scariest Russian ninja-assassin-spy were following her around. By the time she turns back, one of the seats next to Clint Barton is empty and turned toward her.

She plops down next to him and orders “what he’s having.” After flashing her ID she is served two fingers of Glenfiddich on the rocks, and the bartender tops off Clint’s drink before proceeding to ignore the two of them. She takes a sip before swiveling her stool to an angle where she can look at his profile. He’s ignoring her, but she knows he’s intensely aware of her, and that he’s probably tracking the positions and attitudes of every person in this little dim watering hole.

“So you gonna tell me what’s wrong, or just sit there all night pretending you’re invisible?”

He doesn't turn. “It’s classified.” 

She nods. She thinks about how different he’s been since she moved into the tower with Jane, compared to the week they spent getting to know each other in New Mexico. Then, as now, he was aloof, but she had still caught him smirking at her quips once in a while. Now he looked like a stiff breeze could break him apart like a smoke ring. “Ok. But what if… maybe you could tell me a totally made-up story about what happened. Just as long as it feels true.”

He turns then, to stare at her, openly dubious. She shakes her head at him. “You look more broken than I have ever felt in my life. If you want me to just shut up and drink my drink I can do that. Or you can tell me a story.”

He turns back to the bar, eyes scanning the mirrored backsplash behind glossy bottles for… what? a threat? Someone trying to look like they aren’t listening? Apparently he sees nothing worth his full attention and he reaches for the bottom of his glass of whiskey. He drains the glass quickly, sets it down slowly, blinks once, and begins to speak, voice low and wounded. “Ok, a story. Everything was fine, and then one morning I woke up in a hotel bathroom in a tub full of ice, with a hole in my chest where someone had cut out my heart. And I’ve been walking around without it ever since. That’s what’s wrong.”

She hardly moves. Her thumb twitches against the cold glass in her hand. She reaches out, not looking at him, and sets her hand on his forearm, gently, gently, afraid the slightest movement will set him running. His opposite hand comes around quickly and grabs her hand on his arm and holds on tight. She looks at him, her eyes red and glossy. “I’m sorry, Clint. I’m so sorry.”


	2. Sleep Deprivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane searches for signs of the Bifrost, but it's Darcy who actually notices them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set in the two years between Thor (2011) and Thor: The Dark World.

“Jane.”

“Jane.”

Darcy threw a paperclip across the lab’s wide soapstone tabletop at Jane’s head, which was resting on a rather large stack of open reference books.

“Jane.”

Nothing.

Darcy hauled herself up off of her chair, slowly, eyes dry and squinting behind her glasses, and slumped across the floor like she was wading through a vat of syrup. “Jane. Wake up.” Darcy poked her in the shoulder. Poke, poke. “Jane. Something important is beeping. I hate it. Make it stop.”

Jane’s head lifted slowly from Cosmical Electrodynamics with a “bwuh?” There was a crease on her cheekbone and two paperclips dangling from her hair. Several more paperclips and a rubber eraser fell from her shoulders and the back of her neck as she sat up. “Beeping?” Her head drooped a bit to the side and she started to lean a bit sideways. She looked drugged.

Neither of them had slept for more than an hour at a time for almost three days, since one of the three sensors Jane and Darcy had installed in the New Mexico desert had pinged. The sensors were calibrated to the unusual cyclic energy signal Jane had recorded during the last known incident of a connection with Asgard, but this time the shimmer of energy had been fugitive, blinking in and out of Earth’s atmosphere in a millisecond. Her theory was that the Asgardian… scientists? magicians? she wondered what they called themselves, were attempting to connect with Earth again. She hoped so. She hoped it wasn’t the precursor to another visit from one of those huge fire-laser-faced giant robot thingies that had already tried to destroy the whole town.

But that first lone flicker of Bifrost energy had been it. She went over and over the data from all three sensors, verifying the energy signature and triangulating the coordinates and elevation of the source of the energy blip. She dragged Darcy back out into the desert twice to refine the calibration on all three pieces of equipment, one of which was held together with magenta duck tape after an unfortunate incident that Darcy Lewis was unable to recall in detail. And then they waited. Both of them had trouble completing basic problem-solving and logic tests after the first 24 hours of vigil, but Jane insisted they had to stay in the lab in case one of her hand-built and hopefully properly coded and programmed sensors picked up another energy signal.

Jane had initially suggested that they sleep in shifts, but after she fell asleep on her first watch and Darcy fell asleep on the second watch, they had agreed to keep each other awake until Erik could reinforce their sensor vigil. Unfortunately, Erik Selvig was in Oslo, and he wasn't expected back for several days.

“Jane. Seriously. You have to wake all the way up, you’re doing that thing where your eyes are open but you’re asleep. You’re super creeping me out.” Darcy thought her mouth probably tasted like whatever the inside of roadkill tasted like. She made a face at the thought. She wandered past the thing that was beeping and peered at it, one eye squinting hard while the other closed involuntarily, on her way to the coffee maker. She shoved a plastic k-cup into the machine and pushed the GO button, belatedly realizing she should probably put a mug underneath the thingy for the coffee to go in. Oh well, she missed some of it. It can wait. Someone has to make the beeping stop before it lays eggs in her brain. Dear god, the beeping.

Darcy shuffled back to Jane and held the dripping mug under the young scientist’s nodding head. “JANE, COFFEE. WAKE UP, SOMETHING’S HAPPENING” she shouted with all the energy she could muster. Jane flew out of her seat, arms flailing, and Darcy managed to swoop the fresh cup of coffee out of the way and she cradled it under her chin, warming both hands on the ceramic.

“What? where?? what?” Jane raced over to the beeping receiver and checked its readout. She turned around to her laptop and tried three times to open the communication program she had designed to interface with the sensors long-distance before she managed to double-click the icon. The program opened and she could see it -- she could see the energy signature swirling there, out in the vast sandy scrub where she had first run into Thor. She verified that the program was saving all the sensor data before reaching for her keys. “Come on Darcy, get in the van! We have to get out there!”

“Not yet, boss. It’s going to stop in a second. Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, but could you turn the alarm off?” She yawned and went to add sugar to her coffee. The energy readings on Jane’s laptop slowed, the arc of the sine wave central to the signature grew shallow, and then it all just stopped.

Jane, shocked, reset the sensor alarm with one trembling hand. She looked gray, and fatigue was showing through her fair skin, but her eyes were wide open now, staring at her assistant. Said assistant was pondering the hazelnut creamer that had sat on the counter for half a week. “Does this stuff go bad, do you think?”

“Darcy. How did you know? How did you know that the connection wasn’t working and it was going to end?”

“Ugh, it does go bad, ugh. Lumpy. Oh, you know, that beeping woke me up, and I don’t know why but alarms that beep really cheese me off, ugh it’s the worst. But I looked at that output thingy trying to turn off the noise, and I could see this number here,” she tapped at one of the windows on the receiver with a wet stir-stick she had pulled out of her coffee cup, “this number was getting smaller. Usually when the bifrost thing connects all the way it just goes from nothing or like 0.1 to like, flickering numbers, to a bazillion, holds for a minute, and then it’s just gone again. Sorry it didn’t work all the way, but I think whatever it is is getting better maybe. This time it held for like, a whole minute and a half.”

Jane sat down heavily on the ugly brown sofa that they couldn’t afford to replace. “Good one, Darcy. I never noticed that.”

Darcy set the alarm on her phone to a nice gentle rock ballad and got comfy on the other end of the sofa. She reached over and plucked a paperclip out of Jane’s hair. “Let’s both just sleep now, ok? Because if we stay up any longer you’re going to start hallucinating that I’m smarter than you. Now that we know for sure that the beeping wakes me up, I’ll let you know if your long-lost super-boy-toy beams in from another planet, I promise.”

Jane would have answered, but she was already snoring gently, head pillowed on the arm of the sofa.


	3. North of Tromsø

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane and Darcy are somewhere safe. Coulson promised Thor that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set at the beginning of the Avengers, after the tesseract has been stolen, and Erik Selvig and Clint Barton have been compromised.

“What do you mean, Erik didn’t send for us?”

Jane and Darcy were standing in the kitchen of the rental cabin that the Shield agents had ushered both the scientist and her assistant into. The middle of the night phone call from her favorite jack-booted thug, Agent Coulson, had been unexpected, but she had been expecting and hoping to hear from Dr. Selvig about his research in northern Norway, where he was working under the auspices of a research grant through the University of Oslo trying to supplement her own work in New Mexico with data collected closer to the magnetic north pole. Phil had been adamant on the phone that morning, they needed to pack up their most vital equipment and very warm clothes and be at the air strip near Puente Antiguo by 5 am. Now, after 12 hours of travel on an incredibly uncomfortable small-engine plane with one terrifying refueling stop in Iceland, and three hours in a heavy-duty jacked-up SUV on unplowed back roads and dubious narrow bridges, Jane’s travel-exhausted brain couldn’t process what Agent Hanson was saying. The agents were carrying her equipment in to the front room of the house; she grabbed one of them, Hanson, by the sleeve. 

“Agent Hanson, what the hell are we doing here? Where are we, anyway?” She looked around, and peered into the darkness beyond the agent standing in the doorway, arms full of heavy hard-cased sensors. The agent maintained the blank, calm look on his face that she had learned to recognize as code for “it’s classified” and breezed out of her reach to unload his burden.

“I think we’re north of Tromsø.” Darcy was tapping a map Erik had pinned to the wall. There were notes in his handwriting and calculations scribbled at random on the only blank spaces on the map, the long narrow fjords and lakes that surrounded the cabin. “I like what you’ve done with the place. It’s very Viking chic. I expected more Ikea though, to be honest.” 

The cabin walls were covered in heavy-looking wood slab paneling and adorned with taxidermied game animals. Darcy yawned and patted an… elk? reindeer? on the nose. 

Darcy turned to the second agent, “Will you please close the door, for fuck’s sake, it’s literally freezing out there. Literally.” Darcy knew it had to be a couple hours before dawn; she knew what this stupid situation called for. She shuffled to the stove and put hot water on for coffee. She gestured toward the fireplace in the living room. “Whatever your name is, Agent Whichever, could you please start a fire, it’s colder than a tin bra in here. Thank you.” The agents had kept to themselves and played the ignore-Darcy’s-questions games for the entire trip, and she thought it was quite time for them to start talking. She poured a round of coffee and watched in her peripheral vision as Agent Williams stacked several hefty logs around the little kindling teepee that was just starting to blaze in the fireplace. 

“Sit down, sit down. Let’s have a chat.” She laced her hands around the coffee mug, soaking heat into her chilled fingers. Jane sat down in a bit of a huff, that quietly furious look on her face that Darcy knew meant someone was about to get their asses handed to them. The agents sat down. They both took their coffee black. “Spill,” Jane directed at them both. “Where is Erik, why did you drag us here, and why did you lie about him needing us?”

Agent Williams spoke first. “We didn’t lie to you about Dr. Selvig needing you, I believe that cover story was used by Agent Coulson.” Darcy noticed a very brief flare of something, was it worry? doubt? cross the agent’s face. “All I do know is that we were assigned to collect you and deliver you to this location. We weren’t informed that you were expecting Selvig to be here, nor why you were being evacuated from North America.”

“Oh, so you know nothing. That’s what you’re going with. You work for the top secretest top secret intelligence agency in the universe, and you know nothing. Sure.” Jane looked pissed. 

The agent was unperturbed. He downed his hot coffee in one gulp and stood up. “You have provisions that should sustain you for several weeks. This safehouse has electricity and high-speed internet access. If you need emergency services there is a satellite phone hanging next to the fire extinguisher,” he pointed to the two devices, “since you won’t have cell phone service, but it will be a minimum 4 hour wait for help. Here’s the key to the gun safe. Do not go out alone or unarmed; there are arctic wolves, polar bears, bull sea lions and moose in this area, and any of them can and will kill you.”

“A Møøse once bit my sister…” Darcy quipped. Everyone ignored her.

“Oh, so you’re dumping us here and running away? Why am I surprised. Oh, I’m not. What the HELL is going on?” Jane set her coffee cup down hard on the table, and stood up. “Where the hell is Erik? He was here at some point, his equipment is here, I’d recognize that stuff anywhere. I haven’t heard from him in weeks and you’re giving me nothing.”

Darcy put one hand up in a little wave. “I’m sorry to interrupt what is working up to be an awesome freakout, Jane, but,” she turned to the one agent who seemed to know how to talk, “Did you say evacuated? Is that just Shield-weirdo speak for ‘transport’ or is there something bad going on?”

Now the agent looked uncomfortable. “We’ll be in contact when we know anything useful. But right now, we have to get back to New York as soon as possible. Someone will collect you in two weeks, if they can.” 

And with that, both agents got up to leave. 

And then they left.

~~~

Jane set herself to searching through the remnants of Erik’s time in the cabin, looking for notes or clues as to what he was working on and where he had gone. Darcy unpacked the tote full of food that the agents had left on the kitchen floor, mentally cataloging the contents and quantities of the fresh produce, milk and eggs. The refrigerator was tiny, but there was a large chest freezer on the far wall and it was full of game meat. “Jane, you ever eaten seal? Me neither.” Darcy wet a rag with boiling water and wiped down the shelves, which were decorated with mouse poo and a couple of dead spiders, and began stacking canned goods from the tote. 

Her cohort was muttering to herself. “Where are you, Erik? Darce, when do you think he was here last? I can’t find anything, he must have taken his notes with him, obviously he took his laptop. Where are you.” She trailed off. 

Darcy wandered through the rest of the cabin, noting the bunks built in to the far wall and giving the composting toilet she found in a small washroom the side-eye. “He was here fifteen days ago,” she called over her shoulder. “I call top bunk!”

Jane looked up, trying to focus. She was obviously exhausted, having failed to sleep more than a couple of hours during their flights. “How do you know that? What did you find?” 

Darcy nodded toward the same map where she had discovered their location. “Map. It’s full of notes about the aurora, dates and times and some random calculations. The most recent one on there was two weeks ago, only today’s tomorrow because of traveling, so 15 days. Do you want some breakfast? They packed us pop-tarts.” Darcy sat down at the kitchen table again with a fresh cup of coffee and a cold pop tart. She fiddled with her new phone, trying to force it to connect to the wifi the agent had said was available. Within minutes she was scrolling through her news feed. She dropped the half-eaten pop tart on the table.

“Well, fuck.”

“What? What fuck?”

Darcy’s face had gone pale. “Um. Apparently a large sinkhole suddenly appeared in an uninhabited area of the Mojave desert and swallowed several hundred acres of land.”

“So?”

“So. That’s… Shit. There’s no reason for a sinkhole to just happen there. The geography is so wrong. And... I think that’s where there’s a secret Shield facility. A big one. Or, there used to be.”

“Ok, Darcy, how the hell would you even know that?” 

“Wow, someone has her swearing pants on today. You’ve said hell, like, 5 times in the last half hour, I’m impressed. Well, you know how we had to go have Shield orientation at that base in Phoenix? All I had to do was sign a bunch of paperwork and pass the basic weapons training thingy, which I did in no time thanks to Dad and because I am awesome, while they whisked you off to meet all the supernerds there. I got stuck in an office waiting for you for like, three hours. I was so bored.” Darcy shrugged. “So I sort of… hacked into their system. Just a little.” Jane’s jaw dropped. “I mean, obviously I couldn’t get into like, personnel files or anything, not that I would. Ok, I probably would. But I could look at the root directories for a bunch of Shield locations. They have secret bases everywhere. All the major world cities, that was no duh, of course they’d have one there. But I was surprised to see names like, Mojave. Terra Nova, which is a Canadian national park. Deserts, swamplands, places you would not expect. Some of the names stuck with me so I added them to my news feed.”

She handed her phone off to the scientist, who scrolled through aerial photos of the supposed natural disaster. Jane scanned the article. “This says it was from a localized earthquake, related to a minor fault line. There are earthquakes there all the time.”

Darcy shook her head. “Yesss,” she drawled, thinking, “But. No. It just doesn’t look right to me. I dunno, I just don’t think an earthquake would cause a giant mega-huge circular hole in the earth like that. Maybe I’d buy an impact crater or something. Oh shit, Jane, do you think something landed there? Like the aliens at Roswell? Or Thor?”

Jane grabbed the phone again and looked through the photos. “They’re so blurry, they’re either obscured by dust, or,”

“Or someone in Shield clouded up the photos so no one could see man-made structures in the debris,” Darcy interrupted. She studied her friend’s face. “I’m sure it’s fine. No offense, hon, but you look like crap. You’re completely knackered. You need to shut your brain off for a couple of hours, go sleep, I’ll wake you up when the sun comes up and we’ll try to get onto Tromsø time, ok? It’s like, 5 a.m. here.”

Jane nodded, and wandered off to the bunk that Darcy had already set up with Jane’s sleeping bag and pillow. Darcy added another log to the fire in the fireplace and curled up in her own sleeping bag in a cushy chair near a window facing north. She watched flickers of green light tickle the edge of the sky. Unable to sleep, Darcy waited for dawn, and she waited for the knot in her solar plexus to ease. Neither of the two happened. They were alone in the arctic circle in early winter, and the sun never made it above the horizon.


	4. Rebar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I just think I don’t belong here.” Clint tilted his head slightly, silently, watching her face. He willed her to keep talking, now that she had started. Darcy blushed and looked down at her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going slightly out of order, sorry. I'll reorganize the chapters once I have everything in between, but the inspiration is coming to me disordered in time. Thanks for your patience.
> 
> This one is set after Thor, and after the Battle of New York/Avengers.

Darcy leaned against the kitchen counter, absentmindedly fondling an apple. She wasn't thinking about gravity, or the pie she was currently blind-baking the crust for, when she was startled by a “Think fast!” shouted from the doorway. She turned, and flung both hands up in reflex, the apple swinging out of her palm and into a wide arc across the room as she batted at the projectile that was headed towards her face.

“What the hell, Clint? Jeezum crow, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” He walked towards her, gently tossing the apple from palm to palm. Of course he’d caught it. “What did you throw at me, anyways? God, you’re a menace sometimes.” She snatched the mottled golden and red apple from him and turned back to the countertop, setting the fruit among its fellows awaiting her knife and a suffocating coating of cinnamon. 

Clint Barton leaned down quickly, swiping the coin off of the tile floor. He held it out to her. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“That’s a dime.”

“What can I say, I’m a menace. Count the rest as a tip.”

She flipped the dime down the counter’s length, shook her head at him and started peeling an apple. She nudged the cutting board and knife towards him and set the first naked apple in front of him. “Thin slices please.” He smiled and made quick work of the fruit, scooping up the thin pieces and adding them to the bowl she had set out. He nudged her with his elbow as he waited for the second peeled apple. “Darcy. Hey.” She didn’t respond. “Oh my god, woman, what is wrong? You’ve been moping for days. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

Clint didn’t say a thing. He just crossed his arms and waited, looking at her, one eyebrow cocked with that look of bland disinterest he had seen Coulson use successfully against drug lords, mafioso and assassins. He’d successfully knocked her off balance with his entrance and he was hoping step two, “give ‘em a silence to fill,” would work.

He sliced the second apple, and the third. By the fourth, he noticed her biting her bottom lip, considering what she might say. He waited.

“I just think I don’t belong here.” Clint tilted his head slightly, silently, watching her face. He willed her to keep talking, now that she had started. She blushed and looked down at her hands.

“I mean, obviously now that Jane has two Shield brainiacs in her lab who know what she’s talking about most of the time and are actually like, helpful, to her, she doesn't need me. All I do here at the Tower is make dinners and keep the coffee pots filled. If you guys need a team chef you could hire someone way better than me in a heartbeat, this is New York, you can’t swing a squirrel in this neighborhood without hitting a chef.”

Clint waited a beat. “Is that all you think you do?”

“Well, yeah. Jane at least is useful, Shield loves her and she’s smart, figuring out the Bifrost thingy. Plus, you know, she’s Thor’s favorite human. I liked being her assistant, even if all I did was haul her equipment around the desert and got her to stop working once in a while to sleep and eat. But I’m not smart like her, and I’m not all… super awesome ninja hero-anything. I don’t contribute. You need each other, you all go around saving the universe all the damn time. I organize movie night. I mean, come on.”

Clint folded his arms and leaned against the butcher block. “So what are you planning to do?”

“I don’t know. Go back to New Mexico, finish my degree. Get a job.”

“You want to leave?”

“I don’t WANT to leave. But right now I feel like… useless. Purposeless. I don’t help anyone, I don’t do anything, I don’t make anything, I hate feeling like this. Why are you grinning at me like that? It’s seriously pissing me off, if you agree with me just fucking say so and leave me alone. Christ.”

Clint was, indeed, grinning at her. “Darcy. You’re nuts.”

She slammed the paring knife down and whirled on him. “Just leave it, ok? Don’t you have somewhere else to be right now?”

Of course this was exactly when Stark came into the room. Darcy blushed again, furious at Clint and at herself. She shouldn't have told him anything, she should have just left quietly. She’d have to tell Jane she was going back to school, but the thought of walking away from the whole team just left her cringing. Tony sauntered over to the coffee maker and filled his mug, leaning into the steam and inhaling deeply. “Good god damn, Lewis, your coffee is amazing. Who’s nuts? Darcy’s nuts? What’s happening?”  
“Stark, could you tell this crazy young woman what she means to the team?” Clint asked without ever taking his eyes off the now-furious brunette. He saw her jaw clench and he prepared to duck if necessary.

“Hm. What Lewis means to the team. That’s easy. She’s the buttress. No, she’s the scaffolding. No, nope, I have it now: she’s rebar.” He pointed at her, punctuating his statement with a finger.

Darcy threw her hands out in an expression of perfect exasperation. “For god’s sake, Stark. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. I’m not a genius, remember?”

He sat at the kitchen bar and sipped his coffee, one arm across his chest as he cradled his mug. “Ok, so, concrete, right? It’s got incredible compressive strength. You can stack concrete on top of concrete a mile high and the bottom will hold. You can pour a wall, a building, a tower and vertically, it will hold. But one cross-breeze will knock it right over, because it can’t stand up to the shear force. You could push it right over.” 

He loved monologuing; he was in his element now. “All it takes is something that connects the concrete throughout, and you can build an entire city. Add rebar to a concrete wall and it can withstand a hurricane. That’s what rebar does: it changes concrete’s reaction to all the other non-compressive forces acting on it. It gives the wall strength, structure, and purpose.”

She stared at the two men. They were grinning at each other. “I don’t get it.”

Clint smiled gently at her. “Everyone on this team, we’re all broken in one way or another. We've all spent most of our lives completely isolated. Other than Steve, none of us have even worked on an actual team before, and he doesn't know how to be a modern-day person. None of us know how to be normal. Look at Tony, I mean, seriously.” Tony waved his mug towards her. “You? You make us spend time together. You make us normal. You keep us together.”

She sniffed. “Christ. If I’m your barometer for normal you are all totally fucked.”

“Yes.” Clint replied, at the same time that Tony barked out a “Hell yeah!”

“Hey, so, Rebar, when’s that pie going to be done?”


End file.
